I feel home

After over 16 hours of flights and airports, I am home in good ol’ Colorado, back into the dry heat of mid-summer, the land of peanut butter and daytime television in English… and living under dad’s roof (again).  

And honestly, all I really have to say is… TAKE ME BACK!!  What a horrible, helpless feeling it is to be on an airplane taking off the runway, when all you want to do is scream to the pilot “wait! I change my mind! I want off!!!”

I have been trying to do everything and anything to take my mind off of Argentina, Julián, and the wonderful two months I just spent on vacation, but I can’t.  I feel like a brokenhearted thirteen-year-old, when every song on the radio or every movie on TV reminds you of that one special person.

Ugh.

You might have already guessed that I wasn’t in the mood to cook last night.  Besides being exhausted from flying (isn’t it funny how travelling wears you out?  You don’t really physically do anything but sit in an uncomfortable chair for hours, but it’s exhausting!) I just didn’t feel like being in the kitchen.  Thankfully, my dad took me out to dinner last night—Mexican food, my favorite!, and two mind-numbing margaritas.  

Ahhh.

I’ve decided that for today, I am hosting a “guest” chef to share a dinner recipe with you.  Julián only has about three recipes that he rotates through whenever it’s his turn to cook, but he’s a master at them all. 

The closest thing I can come to describing milanesa to the American chef is chicken fried steak.  It’s a prime cut of very thin meat, soaked in a mixture of garlic, eggs, and freshly chopped parsley, and covered in a thick bread crumb batter.

Then, it’s fried.

Eating a well-prepared milanesa is no time to think about your diet.  Milanesa is usually accompanied with a heaping pile of mashed potatoes—but the potatoes should be very mashed (almost runny), and covered in salt.

If you want to get a little crazy, you can even top it with a big slab of melty mozzarella cheese, a slice of fresh tomato, and a sprinkle of oregano.  Juli loves to use the leftovers for milanesa sandwiches the next day—just add a little mayonnaise (a staple Argentine condiment) and two slices of bread.

Milanesa a la Julián (serves 4)

4 thinly cut steaks

3 eggs

two tbsp. chopped garlic

1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 cups bread crumbs

oil (for frying)

salt (to taste)

1.  Mix the eggs, garlic, salt, and parsley in a large bowl, and set aside.

2.  Even if your steaks are thinly cut, Julián likes to give them a good pounding to thin the meat out as much as possible. So, give them a few good punches, and let the meat soak in the egg mixture for 5-8 minutes.

3.  With the bread crumbs spread evenly across a plate, transfer the steaks one by one from the egg mixture and coat them heartily with bread crumbs.

4.  Cover the bottom of a frying dish with oil, and heat on high.  The oil will be ready once you can feel heat radiating off the surface of the oil, and the oil starts to "crack and spatter".  Fry each steak for about two minutes per side, adjusting heat as necessary.  Serve hot with a side of mashed potatoes.  

You go Martha

When I was a child, I loved waking up early and crawling into my mom's big bed to watch the Martha Stewart Show.

Everything she did, all of her crafts and her food and her parties, all seemed so perfect.  Her big white country kitchen was always spotless.  All of the ingredients for her cookies were all pre-measured and set aside in neat little ceramic bowls.  She always had cool, seasonal crafts to make out of (what you thought was) junk lying around the house.

Sigh.  If only we could all be like Martha.

Of course, when I make anything in the kitchen, I end up with a mess.  Either on the countertop, or on my shirt.  One of my biggest pet peeves is finishing a huge, hard-to-put-together meal, when the absolute last thing you want to do is clean... and there is a mountain of dirty dishes just looming in the sink.

I want Martha's kitchen.

Feeling nostalgic thinking about Martha Stewart the other day, I decided to check out her website.  More specifically, her cookie recipes.  Let me tell you, the woman has about 150+ cookie recipes, organized with categories like "Christmas Assortment Cookies", "Grown-Up Cookies", "Cookies For An Occasion"... the list goes on.

Yesterday was "Friend's Day" in Argentina, and seeing as how I have, oh about two friends here, I decided to bake for Julián's friends.  I wanted something that would show off the fact that I could, indeed, cook, but... it had to be something that I could, indeed, cook.  I didn't really feel like going to the grocery store, either.

"Lime Meltaways".  Let's see, I had limes.  I had powdered sugar.  They looked easy.  Done.  I made the dough and let it sit in the fridge for about 5 hours, and later on that evening decided to make them just before Juli left to meet up with the boys.

I was delightfully surprised at how easy the cookies were to make, and even more surprised at how good they were! True to their name, Lime Meltaways literally melt the instant they touch your tongue, and the sugary, limey aftertaste keeps you grabbing for more and more. 

Martha's done it again.

Unfortunately, Julián's original plans fell through, and their "Friend's Day" was celebrated elsewhere.  I, however, celebrated with my best friends in the world: my girls from Sex and the City, a hot cup of tea, and a plateful of these cookies. 

Lime Meltaways (adapted from The Martha Stewart Show)

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup confectioners' sugar

Finely grated zest of 2 limes

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon coarse salt

1. Mix butter and 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar until fluffy. Add lime zest, lime juice, and vanilla, and mix until fluffy (again).
2. Whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt in a separate bowl. Add to butter mixture and mix until just combined.  Be sure not to overmix.
3. Divide dough in half. Roll into two logs, about 1 ½” diameter.  Wrap in parchment paper and refrigerate for at least an hour.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove parchment from logs; cut into ½” thick circles. Space cookies 1” apart on greased baking sheets. Bake until barely golden, about 11 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through.  Remove cookies and let cool slightly, about 5 to 8 minutes.  While still warm, toss a couple of cookies at a time with remaining 2/3 cup confectioner’s sugar in a resealable plastic bag.

One down, five to go

As I'm sure many aspiring chefs do, I have a list of things I want to try to cook.  A cooking bucket list, so to speak.  It's an ever-changing and growing list, but here's what I have so far:

• some sort of big, multi-layered cake (like this)
• Chinese pan-fried noodles
• Rugelach
• bon-bons
• an entire stuffed chicken
• garlic knots (last night for dinner)
• candied nuts (keep reading)

Last week, I managed to whip up some ice cream (no pun intended) and chocolate-filled croissants (which, in case you're wondering why I didn't post the recipe, were horribly ugly.  They were delicious, but lumpy and burned on the bottom and nowhere close to a shape resembling a croissant.  So once I perfect the recipe, I will share).

Another rained-in afternoon inspired me to turn to my bucket list.  We live in a sort-of studio; the bedroom is cut off from the kitchen by a sliding door, but the door doesn't quite reach the ceiling.  This basically means that anything I cook in the kitchen will inevitably linger in the air of the entire apartment for the following two or so hours. 

Since we were trapped in the apartment for the rest of the afternoon, I didn't want to stink it up / smoke us out.  Indeed, I could seize this opportunity and cook up something so stinking delicious, it would fill the apartment and make us WANT to stay inside and EAT all afternoon!!!

In the streets of Buenos Aires during the winter, little old bundled up men huddle close to big steaming pots of nuts, stirring constantly and chatting up the other little old bundled up men selling newspapers next door. 

I love walking past these men.  Suddenly, after coming up for air from the humid, disgusting subway, I get a blast of the smell of sweet, hot sugar in my face.  They are called garrapiñadas, but I think they're basically candied peanuts. 

It smells good in the street, so it should make my house smell good, right?

 

Oohhh, yes.

They were so easy to make (took about 15 minutes) and I didn't even have to walk to the end of the block to grab that one stupid little ingredient that always seems to be missing.

I chose to use almonds, but you could candy pretty much any old nut you've got lying around the house.  Well, the kinds of nuts you eat... if you live with a crazy old nut, that's a different story.

Candied Almonds

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup almonds

3 tbsp. water

1 tbsp. vanilla

1 tbsp. sea salt

1.  Heat the almonds, sugar, and water over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.

2.  Once the sugar begins to melt, mix in vanilla.

3.  The almonds are finished when the sugar is brown and sticky and covers the nuts.  Remove from heat and place on non-stick surface.  Break apart any nuts that are sticking together.

4.  Sprinkle with sea salt and let cool for at least five minutes.

A hot bowl of something

I woke up yesterday thinking it was already 6:00 pm. 

From my side of the bed, I can see into the bathroom, which has a skylight window, and I can make my daily weather call before my toes even touch the floor.  If the bathroom is yellowish-bright, its sunny out.  If its just bright, its cloudy out. 

Yesterday, the bathroom was dark.  Like scary movie house dark.

It was kind of nice, at first.  I made my ritual cup of morning coffee, ate a chocolate filled croissant, and watched Tom and Jerry in bed. 

But around 2:00 pm, it didn't look like the weather was clearing up any time soon, and I had cabin fever.  Julián and I decided to venture out to a park for a hotdog lunch.  The weather man (the real weather man, not my bathroom window) was reporting a whopping 64 degrees despite the cloud coverage, so I dressed appropriately. 

Stepped out of the subway after a 30 minute ride, and it was pouring rain.  I know I speak to all of you women out there when I say my heart dropped.  Why does it always have to rain on the day you decide to give your hair a New York style, big-momma style blowdry??  And no umbrella!  I was crushed. 

Of course, Mr. Latin Charm tried to make me feel better by saying my wet jerry curl looked even sexier than my hair did before.  It worked.  We went to the park and ate our hotdogs under the safety of the hotdog man's tent.

Getting home last night, I couldn't wait to throw on my pajamas and curl up around a bowl of something hot.  I've got it! Chili!  My mom always made the best chili when I was a kid; she would make so much in fact, that she'd freeze giant Ziplock bags of chili in our garage fridge, so we could just pull it out and eat it whenever we wanted. 

Argentina does not have chili.  Argentina has guiso, and more specifically in this case, guiso de lentejas, or lentils.  In layman's terms, it's lentil soup.  And it's incredible. 

This recipe takes about two days to prepare.  Just like you would when preparing dried beans, you'll need to soak the lentils overnight before using them in your soup the next day.  You can even soak them a few days ahead, like I did, and store them in the refrigerator.

As with the case of any old soup recipe, you can play with the recipe and add / take out ingredients as you please, make it more watery or more hearty, etc.  This specific recipe called for beef AND spicy sausage, but I just doubled the amount of sausage.

As with the best things in life, this soup takes time and patience.  Besides boiling the lentils, I constantly kept the heat at medium or medium low, and let the flavors of all the ingredients simmer and mix together slowly.  It will make your kitchen smell divine. 

Guiso de lentejas

(Adapted and translated from Recetas Simples Y Deliciosas)

3 cups lentejas

2 tbsp. fresh garlic, finely chopped

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 green onions, chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

2 spicy sausages

1 small box tomato puree

2 sweet potatoes, cooked and chopped

2 potatoes, cooked and chopped

1 tbsp. crushed red pepper

2 tbsp. oregano

Salt and pepper to taste

4 tbsp. canola oil (for frying)

    1. Soak the lentejas in water at room temperature water for at least 8 hours.  Throw out the soaking  water and strain the lentejas.  Cover with fresh water, about two inches above the lentejas, and boil until tender, about an hour.  Remove from heat and set aside.

    2. In a large pot, combine garlic, onions, peppers, and oil, and fry 5 minutes.

    3. Add the spicy sausage and fry two minutes longer.  Add tomato puree and condiments.

    4. Cover with water until all ingredients are submerged. Cover and cook on medium heat for an hour.

    5. Add potatoes and sweet potatoes and let cook 7 more minutes.

    6. Add the lentejas, stir well, and cook 5-10 minutes longer, just enough to allow ingredients to mix.  Additional water can be taken out/added as desired.  Serve with a side of crusty bread and a hearty glass of red wine.

Made from scratch

I am so proud of myself.

Somehow, by some sort of cosmic magic, I managed to make homemade ice cream last night.  Without an ice cream maker.  And here's the kicker: it was absolutely delicious.  In fact, we've almost eaten the entire bowel, and it's only been 18 hours.

After searching the internet for a trustworthy recipe until my eyes were bloodshot, I found one here to make the ice cream custard base, and here to actually make / freeze the ice cream.  You can add any sort of ingredients you want; I chose dulce de leche (obviously) and chocolate chip sprinkles.

The recipe for the custard base is intimidating at first, especially if you don't have a cooking thermometer.  My celsius-programmed oven / stove is always on the fritz, and I never know how anything will turn out once it goes into the infierno.  But, this recipe was surprisingly fool-proof.  Oven: 0, Hannah: 1.  My advice to you on the ice cream: do it! do it! do it!

Besides eating dulce de leche on everything, I've been wandering around on my own in the city lately and pondering the meaning of life and the price of tea in China. 

The Argentine has a big exam this week and has been studying relentlessly for days, so I've been left alone to bake.  And think.  And think.  And walk around.  And bake. 

In fact, I'm attempting homemade pizza tonight for dinner.  Pizza Napolitana to be more specific, which is basically a mozarella pizza with tomato slices, green olives, and a few hearty shakes of oregano.

More on that tomorrow...

This ain't no stinkin' caramel!

Cold South American winter days like this make me want to hole up in my apartment all day in my pajamas and bake and watch movies on TNT.  I love the cozy pocket of heat that the oven creates in my tiny kitchen, the smell of sugar and flour and chocolate baking in the early afternoon.

I'm also secretly addicted to eating dough while baking.  It's a problem.  A bad baking habit.  I remember as a child, my mom told me that I would become violently ill by eating too much dough, because of the raw eggs.  To this day, I haven't gotten sick from cookie dough.  I test my boundaries each time I bake by trying just one more little piece, one more tiny piece...

Seeing as how I'm in Argentina, I decided today to make homemade dulce de leche (and besides, you might need it for those alfajores I hope you're going to try!).  It's a seemingly basic idea: heat milk and sugar until it forms a thick, caramely consistency. 

Actually, the Argentines have a story behind the origins of dulce de leche.  The maid of an Argentine governor in the 1800s was preparing her master his sweetened milk, when a visitor came to sign a peace treaty and she accidently left her milk to boil while attending to him.  A few hours later she returned to find a thick, brown paste in place of the milk.  Lo and behold, the governor tried it and liked it, and dulce de leche was born!

Dulce de leche complements almost any dessert-resembling food.  Bananas.  Cake.  Brownies.  Ice cream.  Cookies.  Hell, I've seen it eaten with a spoon straight from the container.  I chose to pair mine this afternoon with a slice of chocolate chip banana bread and a steaming hot mug of Irish coffee.

Now, this is no bake-and-run recipe.  You'll need to be constantly checking your temperature and stirring the milk to keep it from burning.





So pull up a stool to the stovetop, turn on a sappy daytime television movie, and relax as your kitchen fills with the sweet smells of warm milk and sugar. 

Dulce de leche (700g)

4 ¼ cups whole milk

1 cup sugar

1 tbsp. vanilla

½ tbsp. baking soda

1. Combine the milk, sugar, and baking soda in a large pot and bring to a boil.
2. Once the milk begins to boil, bring the heat to medium low, stirring constantly. You should notice a frothy top layer beginning to form.
3. Play with the heat between medium and low to keep a gentle, rolling boil.  Stir often, at least every five minutes, to prevent burning.
4. Once the milk thickens and turns a warm brown color, it should be finished.  Test by taking a spoonful of the milk and pouring it.  It should be harder to pour, but still a liquid consistency. The dulce de leche will harden more once refrigerated.  
5. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Refrigerated, the dulce de leche can be stored for up to three months.

Guilty pleasures

Yesterday was Argentina's Independence Day.  It's nothing like the 4th of July in the U.S., which, in my opinion, is just our excuse to drink more beer than we usually do.  Strangely enough, however, we do have more in common with our southern neighbors than you might think.

Argentines love BBQs.  They seriously love them.  Every Sunday afternoon, I can count on smelling that smoky, summery BBQ air wafting up to my balcony from somewhere below.  It makes my mouth water just thinking about it.  So of course, to celebrate Independence Day last night, we went to a BBQ.  I ate about three different kinds of meat and almost had to forklift myself out of bed this morning.

To catch those of you up on why exactly I'm babbling about Argentina, I am living here.  For the next 15 days, anyway.  I studied in Buenos Aires for a semester of college and fell in love with the city (and, well, a boy...).  After graduation, I scraped together enough of my savings to fly out here and stay in an apartment for two months.  Besides wandering around the city and spending time curled up next to my handsome man, I cook. I've been experimenting a lot lately with local cuisine, which is basically the two following staples: meat and sugar.  My next project is figuring out how all Argentine women stay so skinny, with chocolate shops and chicken-fried steak day in and day out.

Perhaps one of the most "Argentine" of all cuisines is the alfajor.  It is a cookie on steriods.  Two crumbly butter cookies sandwich a thick layer of dulce de leche, and the entire package is sometimes even dipped in a sultry layer of milk or white chocolate.

They are everywhere.  They line the streets of Buenos Aires like Candyland, and there are about 30 different brands to choose from. The alfajor de maizena, however, is the most classic of all:

I could eat these everyday.  Sometimes, I do.

The dough is crumbly and light, with a hint of lemon, and melts instantly in your mouth.

Alfajores are usually filled with dulce de leche, but mousse or jam can be used as well.  My favorite brand of dulce de leche in the States is this; it's the closest you'll come to what Buenos Aires tastes like. 

Alfajores de maizena

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups Maizena (or any brand of corn starch)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
200 grams butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest


1.  Preheat oven to 350°F.


2.  Mix dry ingredients together.


3.  Cream the butter with the sugar. Add the egg yolks, the vanilla extract, and the lemon zest.


4.  Dig a hole in the middle of the bowl with the dry ingredients.  Pour the creamed mix into the hole, and with a spoon, slowly fold the two together.  The batter will be very crumbly; this is normal!  Once the batter begins to stick together, form a large ball of dough by pressing smaller pieces of the dough together.  I find sometimes if the dough is too crumbly to manage, an extra egg yolk helps.


5.  Cover the ball of dough with foil and refrigerate for 45 minutes.


6.  Remove from refrigerator.  Cut manageable pieces of dough off of the ball, forming patty-like cookies with your hands, about ½” thick.


7. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for around 17-20 minutes. Begin checking after the first 10 minutes, especially if your oven runs warm. The dough should be white, not golden.  They may appear undone, but overcooking the dough will make it dry.


8.  Quickly remove the cookies and place them on a plate to cool, about 30 minutes.


9.  Once completely cooled, place a spoonful of dulce de leche (or your filling of choice) in the middle of one cookie and carefully sandwich between another cookie.  You might even want to pour a glass of milk before you take your first bite.

The story of mustgo

Writing the first entry to a blog feels like my first day of school back when I was young.  I loved the fresh newness of my brightly colored notebooks, the crisp white pages just waiting to be filled with words. Except now, I'm much older and much more anal about what I write. At least the "backspace" key is easier to use than making a mess of eraser shavings and pencil smudges. 

My fondest memories of my childhood take place in the kitchen.  Whether I was on the floor throwing a temper tantrum, huddled close to the heating outlet with a blanket draped over my shoulders on a cold winter morning, or making "experiments" with the spice cabinet, it seems that we were always in the kitchen. 

We always ate well in my house. Give my mom an hour and three basic ingredients, and she could whip up a meal deserving of a fancy waiter and dimly lit candles. Even now, it seems like there is always an abundance of food in the refrigerator--and not the usual "refrigerator food", like ketchup and milk. Regular staples that often appear in my mom's fridge include (but are not limited to): lemon and pepper grilled asparagus, homemade brie cheese, fruit cakes, mango lime salsa with freshly-caught salmon...  no big deal.

If, however, for some reason my mom came home from work and was absolutely too exhausted to dive straight into cooking one of her three-course meals, she made what we called a "mustgo" dinner. She'd just take any old leftovers out of the fridge, usually letting each of us three kids pick exactly what we wanted, and whip up a big dinner of everything that "must go" from the fridge. There you have it: the story of mustgo.